IRENA'S VOW - Mark Reviews Movies

Irena's Vow, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 15, 2024

In an instant, Irena Gut (Sophie Nélisse) and so many in Poland lose everything. At the start of Irena's Vow, she is studying to be a nurse, lives with family in a cozy house, and has at least some idea of what her life will be. Then, Nazi Germany invades the country, and she is forced to work in a factory, returns home one day to find a German soldier has taken over the residence, and doesn't know what will become of her if she makes one real or perceived mistake in the sight of the occupying force.

Gut was a real person, and Dan Gordon's screenplay (based on his play of the same title) is an act of honoring the many sacrifices she made, the assorted dangers into which she put herself, and the constant dread she experienced, simply because she could not stand by and do nothing, knowing that other people, her neighbors and fellow citizens, had to make sacrifices, face dangers, and experience dread similar to or worse than the ones of her life. As a story of courage, Gut's life serves as an inspiration.

This movie counts on that but doesn't match the impact of even imagining what Gut's experiences, as well as those of the dozen or so Jewish people she hid in a most unthinkable place, must have been like. It plays like a thriller, made up of several close calls, plenty of clockwork-like maneuvers, and a broad sense of paranoia that primarily makes pawns of its characters.

After the invasion, Irena is transferred from the factory to an occupied manor, where German Army officer Eduard Rügemer (Dougray Scott) and others have various domestic workers forced to cook meals and tailor the soldiers' uniforms. In the basement, she meets those Jewish tailors, most of whom have never needed to sew anything, being previously employed as accountants, teachers, attorneys, and artists. Irena exaggerated her own experience to be placed here, but the people in the basement make it clear that the fate for her deception being uncovered would be nothing compared to what would to happen to them.

She sees that first-hand, when a march of German SS officials clear the streets of a busy market and one member takes a baby from straying woman's arms, throws the infant to ground, and stomps on the child, before shooting the horrified mother. That, we later hear Irena say, is the moment when she decides that she will defend any life in her power to protect.

The movie's simple thematic core is in that statement, and Gordon's apparent need to have Irena state it bluntly gets at the simplistic approach of this story. Everyone explains everything, even the things that are self-evident from history or from director Louise Archambault depiction of that and other atrocities in cold, cruel plainness.

Later, Irena and others are again forced from the market to witness a group of people, including children, being executed for the "crime" of sheltering Jews. The use of something so horrific as a means to accentuate the tension of Irena's own efforts is unnecessary narratively and somewhat questionable in the context of it being a suspense-building tactic.

We already know Irena and the people she's hiding are in danger. After all, she has moved the Jewish tailors from the manor to Rügemer's new home, an occupied villa on the outskirts of the city, and hides them in the cellar there. The Nazi solider is right there, occasionally hearing sounds in the night, returning home at unexpected times when the group is helping Irena clean, and finding it suspicious that so many locals are accusing him of giving shelter to targets of Nazis' murderous goals. How so many casual observers figure out what Irena is doing, even as Rügemer has no inkling of who's living just beneath his feet, feels like another piece of trying to force tension out of material that's inherently unnerving.

Ignoring the awkward mechanics of the plotting, the movie features a determined performance from Nélisse, who balances encroaching terror and genuine compassion well, and a story that's clearly worth telling. That it downplays the hiders-in-the-cellar to named but otherwise anonymous figures seems to be missing a big point of that story. Also, there's the confused portrayal of Rügemer, another real person who makes a significant decision here that makes him one thing and adds a stipulation to the choice that only seems to confirm what we think of him from the start (The historical record of the real-life man is just as confused, depending on whose account one takes to make a determination, but the movie simply approaches him with uncertainty).

Watching Irena's Vow is to feel continual disconnect from and within the material. It may be a story that deserves and needs to be told, but the filmmakers approach it in a contrived way that undermines the dreadful reality of that story. It simply doesn't do it justice.

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